HP Inc. to acquire Poly

HP has agreed to acquire Poly, a leading global provider of workplace collaboration solutions, at an implied total enterprise value of $3.3bn

The acquisition accelerates HP’s strategy to create a more growth-oriented portfolio, further strengthens its industry opportunity in hybrid work solutions, and positions the company for long-term sustainable growth and value creation.

The rise of hybrid work is creating sustained demand for technology that enables seamless collaboration across home and office environments. Approximately 75% of office workers are investing to improve their home setups to support new ways of working. Traditional office spaces are also being reconfigured to support hybrid work and collaboration, with a focus on meeting room solutions. Currently, there are more than 90m rooms, of which less than 10% have video capability. As a result, the office meeting room solutions segment is expected to triple by 2024.

“The rise of the hybrid office creates a once-in-a-generation opportunity to redefine the way work gets done,” said Enrique Lores, CEO of HP. “Combining HP and Poly creates a leading portfolio of hybrid work solutions across large and growing markets. Poly’s strong technology, complementary go-to-market, and talented team will help to drive long-term profitable growth as we continue building a stronger HP”.

Dave Shull, Poly CEO, added: “I am thrilled about the opportunity this represents for Poly, our employees, partners and customers. The combination gives us an opportunity to dramatically scale, reaching new markets and channels, supercharging our innovation with a like-minded partner. This transaction offers compelling and certain value for our shareholders and speaks to the hard work done by our teams to become a recognised leader in helping businesses everywhere meet the challenges of a generational disruption in the way people work”.

In a more hybrid world, cloud platforms like Zoom and Microsoft Teams will play an important role in innovating new experiences. Eric Yuan, Founder and CEO of Zoom added, “Highest quality audio and video has become an essential component of work across every industry, whether in an office, at home, or on the go. Bringing the Poly and HP offerings together will unlock new opportunities to partner with Zoom and turn any space into a hub for dynamic video collaboration”.

Poly will help drive the growth and scale of HP’s peripherals and workforce solutions businesses. Peripherals represent a $110bn segment opportunity growing 9% annually, driven by the need for more immersive experiences. Workforce solutions represent a $120bn segment opportunity that is growing 8% annually, as companies invest in digital services to set up, manage, and secure more distributed IT ecosystems. Poly’s devices, software and services, combined with HP’s strengths across compute, device management, and security, creates a robust portfolio of hybrid meeting solutions.

Poly is a leader in video conferencing solutions, cameras, headsets, voice and software. Together, HP and Poly will deliver a complete ecosystem of devices, software, and digital services to create premium employee experiences, improve workforce productivity, and provide enterprise customers with better visibility, insights, security, and manageability across their hybrid IT environments.

HP expects the transaction to be immediately accretive to HP’s revenue growth, margins, and non-GAAP EPS at close. With the expanded value proposition of a complete hybrid work solution, combined with HP’s scale and go-to-market capabilities, HP expects to realise substantial revenue synergies in peripherals as well as meeting room and workforce solutions.

HP will be able to cross-sell across its global commercial and consumer sales channels, while driving incremental sales from combining Poly’s products with HP’s PC portfolio. As a result, HP expects to achieve $500m of revenue synergies by FY25 and accelerate Poly’s revenue growth to an approximately 15% CAGR over the first three years after closing. In addition, HP expects the transaction to improve Poly’s operating margins by approximately six percentage points from current levels by FY25, driven by scale efficiencies across supply chain, manufacturing and overhead.

The transaction is expected to close by the end of calendar 2022, subject to Poly stockholder approval, required regulatory clearances, and the satisfaction of other customary closing conditions. HP will finance the transaction through a combination of balance sheet cash and new debt.

This transaction is consistent with HP’s capital returns program target. HP remains committed to aggressively buying back shares of at least $4bn in FY22, and to returning significant capital to shareholders while continuing to invest in growth.